


A Chance Meeting

by ashesandhoney



Series: It Came From Tumblr (Ficlet Collections) [2]
Category: Infernal Devices Series - Cassandra Clare
Genre: Alternate Universe - Childhood Friends, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-16
Updated: 2018-01-12
Packaged: 2018-07-15 12:57:26
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 1,508
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7223236
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ashesandhoney/pseuds/ashesandhoney
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>What if Jem had been sent to New York instead of London after his parents had died?</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

Let’s imagine that Elias had gotten married young and taken a post in New York - if his brother can go halfway around the world in one direction, he’ll go halfway around the world in the other. So when Wen Yu and Jonah are killed, Jem is sent to family. To his aunt and uncle in New York instead of to London.

Jem, 12 years old and homesick and without Will to help balance him out, starts sneaking out of the Institute to go lurk around in New York’s (still barely getting started) Chinatown just because he wants to hear the language and be reminded of home. Then, sweets in hand from the shopkeeper who had noticed him and felt he needed some feeding, he walks back home through the park.

It is there that he meets Nate first. Nate with all his smug superiority. He was born in England after all and is properly civilized. He’s also the kind of poverty stricken white boy who needs to find someone lower than him in the social order to abuse. The Chinese kid is a good enough choice.

Nate follows him through the park, taunting and bullying and stealing the only baozi Jem has had in months. Jem could beat the hell out of him but he’s a mundane and Jem takes his status as a Shadowhunter seriously. He wouldn’t punch the mundane boy over something petty like a steamed bun. He wants to but he wouldn’t.

Tessa has no such issues. Her brother left her to read on a bench while he was off torturing the other kids and she comes to find him. Eleven years old with more empathy and heart than most people will ever have and when Nate doesn’t stop because she tells him to, she pushes him into the pond.

Her aunt is livid, “Nate was only playing. You’re a lady, Theresa, behave like it. Help me get him up.”

She might have felt guilty if the serious boy with the dark eyes wasn’t grinning at her. It’s hard to make friends with a boy when he’s a gentleman and you’re a poor girl and it is the 1870s but they manage it. Meeting in the park while her aunt is busy and her brother is distracted.

Jem starts letting secrets slip. She sees through glamour faster than any mundane he’s ever seen so he starts using it and sitting at her dining room table while her brother sleeps off a drunken night out.

They sneak down to Chinatown and Tessa uses her newly acquired, poorly pronounced Mandarin to order baozi that Jem pays for and the same clerk who gave him that free one once, drops some extra in the bag.

She takes him to New York landmarks and if they hold hands, she can share in his glamour and they can sneak into the Plaza and gawk at the riches.

She’s the first one to notice the strands of silver in his hair and so he tells her another secret and she doesn’t cry over it until she’s made it home to her own bed.

They’re getting old enough that it’s a scandal but his aunt and uncle run the Institute alone and don’t notice much and Tessa’s aunt needs her to run down to market or to drop off some of the sewing she took in so she can hardly keep Tessa supervised and in doors like a proper lady.

Her brother still leaves.

Her aunt still dies.

But this time there is someone to hold her hand at the funeral.

She still leaves for England.

Jem lasts two days after the boat sails before he goes to his uncle and requests to be transferred to an Institute in England. He says that it is about seeing where his father grew up before he dies. It is really about the idea of spending his last years without her. If he doesn’t follow her, he will never see her again and he can’t tolerate that thought.

Jem goes to say goodbye to the clerk who corrects Tessa’s pronunciation and always gave them extra snacks because the man is the only friend he has left in the city.

“You ask that little American girl to marry you this time,” he says when Jem admits where he’s going.

“She’s taller than you are,” Jem teases.

“I remember her when you two were this big,” he says holding his hand out over the floor though Jem was sure they were never that small, “You marry her and you invite me. I will cook a feast for you.”

Jem laughs and when he gets back to the Institute he reopens the trunk he had packed and digs to the bottom until he finds the jade pendant that had been his mother’s. Instead of leaving there with the other memories of his family, he carries it with him in his pocket when he leaves for London.

He tells himself that it is just for luck.


	2. French Kissing

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This doesn't match the tone of the first sketchy chapter but I like it anyways.

“So does that mean French people kiss differently from the rest of us?” Jem asked with a laugh. He lay on his back and looked up at the clouds. They had found a rooftop where they could lay out a quilt she had borrowed from her aunt and stare up at the sky without anyone bothering them.

“I suppose so though I don’t know how much one can trust Nate on matters of culture,” she said.

“So how does one kiss with one’s tongue then?” Jem asked with a laugh as he rolled over to prop himself up on his elbows and look at her.

“I certainly don’t know. I haven’t kissed anyone at all,” Tessa said looking away from him.

“Neither have I,” he said.

She looked back at him and he expression was serious before she leaned in. They were both lying on their stomach and he could feel the gravel of the flat roof below the blankets. She was still holding her book as she got closer. The world narrowed down to her.

She pressed her lips to his. Warm and soft. They held still for a moment then she smiled and Jem felt her lips move. He had closed his eyes and he opened them to find her blushing.

“Now we can both say we’ve been kissed,” she said dropping her attention back down to her page.

“I think we need to test the French way too,” he said though he had no idea where the bravado it took to say those words came from.

She giggled and turned back to him. She was blushing even harder and he didn’t think he was any less pink. It didn’t stop them. She opened her mouth and then thought better of it. The little frown line between her eyebrows was adorable. He hadn’t ever noticed that she was adorable before. How had he failed to notice that she was pretty before this moment?

Her mouth touched his and she had bit lip when she was nervous and this time it was wet against his. He started to open his mouth but wasn’t sure what he was meant to do. Her tongue touched his lower lip and he startled and they fell away laughing again.

“Come here, we can do better than that,” he said once the giggling had stopped and she leaned back in, still smiling though not blushing as hard.

This time he touched her cheek with his fingers and kissed her first. Just his mouth on hers but this time he moved instead of standing like a statue. She matched him, pressing in and moving her lips against his as fireworks went off in his head.

Her tongue touched his and he shivered but didn’t pull back this time. He pulled her closer and she opened her mouth to him with a soft sigh. The awkwardness fell away. Jem was sure it was elegant or the kind of things people would write poetry about but it was wonderful. It was wonderful to have her so close. It was wonderful to know what she tasted like and to be able to touch her hair.

When they pulled away after what felt like forever and not nearly long enough all at once, she looked at him differently. He laughed and kissed her again, soft and fast.

“You know, nice girls aren’t meant to kiss boys on rooftops,” she said.

“Oh, where is the kissing meant to happen? I am quite open to trying other locations. The park? Your kitchen? A hansom cab? Perhaps the public library or the museum or in lobby of the Ritz among all those people in fur coats,” he suggested.

“I don’t think they’re meant to kiss boys in those places either,” she said.

“But we could if you wanted to,” Jem said with a smile and she grinned back before blushing and hiding behind her hair.

“Maybe not the Ritz,” she said.

He pushed back her hair and she took the invitation to kiss him again.


End file.
